BCM388 - Warthog catapulting with a dropship, bailing fun

(5:31) Level 2 ('Halo') on Heroic. Continuing the topic of Warthog catapulting with a dropship, you can have fun bailing from the hog to fly through the air solo, though it takes a bit of perseverance to get good flights. Here are 21 examples using various set-ups, some with Stacker and some with Johnson.

Released November 20th 2019, gameplay recorded November 9th-19th 2019.

Commentary

00:02 Johnson mans the gun as I get things underway with a good long trajectory. Heading out over the cliff like this is probably the most common outcome you'll get, among good bails.

00:22 To go with my caption that you need perseverance, here's an example of a relative failure (of which you can expect many). There's no big flight, though there's still some comedy for the movie.

00:38 Back to Johnson now; in fact the movie mostly alternates between Stacker and Johnson. I fly high, deflecting up off the tower and getting a nice view of the beam firing.

00:56 Tagging the ship in mid-flight is hard, but I manage to score a hit here.

01:11 Good height, and I die just before hitting anything hard. At the end you can see the ship vanish.

01:27 In some of my set-ups I had Stacker or Johnson in the seat, for the sake of variation. I haven't ended up using many of the clips from those set-ups, but here's one with Stacker. A lowish trajectory sends me out over the cliff at a fast pace.

01:42 No kick from the hog here, and I end up on cruising along above the dropship, and eventually bouncing off it. Very rare, to get a bounce like that. Notice also that I briefly get a flip prompt around 1:53 (see my article).

01:57 An unusual trajectory along the hill. I though I might survive the impact, but in fact I'm killed.

02:12 Almost zapped over the tower! Another clip in which you see the ship vanish.

02:29 This bail was a dud in terms of getting a big trajectory, but it illustrates something amusing you can get, namely the distortion of Marine screams as they whizz away at high speed. I also fluke a landing, courtesy of some cushioning.

02:45 Good height and another nice view of a beam firing. I end up coming down towards the ship and scoring four pistol hits, before dying and going into a fast spin.

03:00 I go on a standard sort of trajectory but, for a change, zoom my sniper sight on the spinning hog.

03:15 A high trajectory, and I get to see the hog eventually falling through the ship's fork, which I though looked amusing.

03:29 Another tag! This one was actually relatively easy as I was in front of the ship.

03:42 A rather big trajectory past the tower.

03:57 A speedy low trajectory over the cliff.

04:11 I fly along with the ship for a while, and get a flip prompt just before dying.

04:26 The hog seems to give me an extra strong knock here, and I fly away at high speed. Pretty rare to get this, though I did have one other very similar case. The death animation here was only short, so the clip ends a bit abruptly.

04:39 An excellent long trajectory. I saw that I was heading for a rock and hoped I might get cushioned, but alas the impact turned out to be too much.

04:54 Right over the tower! I was about one second away from getting zapped. You can see the ship vanish at the end, and then there's briefly the sound of the wind, which I thought was nice.

05:11 I've mainly been doing early bailing, but here's an amusing late bail which saves me from heading down to the sea - and I get a joke out of it to end the movie.

Closing remarks Something you doubtless noticed is that after I die in mid-air, my body often goes into a spontaneous spin. It looks like this relates to the spin the hog had when I bailed. Interesting, and amusing! In such cases, apparently the spin was latent within me, but suppressed until I died (or perhaps until I hit something, which might cancel the latent spin).

Another point of interest. Inspecting my footage, I realised that when I bail, there's usually a clear anomaly in the frame at which I'm officially out (as indicated by the HUD changing to show my ammo). The anomaly being, one or both Marines (usually both) are not where they should be. Two clear examples in the movie are around 1:02 and 2:34, but there are plenty of other examples if you care to look (sometimes a guy may be partly or totally hidden by the hog though). Based on a few observations, I think what may be happening is, the Marines are being rendered in their positions from one frame ago - which means they lag behind the hog. I don't recall noticing this anomaly before. But then again, I've never done so much mid-air bailing from a hog before!

The clips with Johnson on the gun were all from a save I made with an aussie in the seat (I thought it would be nice to have a different voice from the Marine in the previous movie). As for the Stacker clips, those were all obtained from modifications of the Pelican set-up seen created in BCM376.

Three of the clips were from November 9th when I had the idea of bailing (clips 2, 19 and 21) and, after a bit of play, realised there was a lot of promise. But the rest are from the 16th-19th.